"We need to set the age at which they can, the children can, legally access social media," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this week, which translates into American (via bad Japanese translation) as "All your screen are belong to us."
“It is clear we need age-appropriate restrictions to platforms,” von der Leyen insisted, following a European Commission report on online child safety. You see how this works, don't you? The Commission commissions a report concluding that the Commission (surprise!) requires more power. Further commissions to follow.
Here's the tell: "We do not expect children to design their own seatbelts. We do not expect parents to fit airbags at home."
Online safety and privacy expert Paul Walsh — whose résumé includes "building standards, API services, filtering technologies, and content moderation techniques" — took von der Leyen to task on Monday, in a lengthy post "to expose the misinformation and misdirection" in her statements.
"This is not about whether children can access social media, it is about whether social media can access our children," von der Leyen claimed. Walsh replied, "The first part is true. This isn't about children. It's about surveillance and combating political dissent," but "the second part is a PR soundbite that politicians are using like a campaign slogan straight out of 1984."
How so? It's all in the implementation — a government-mandated biometric lock built into every device with a screen, which means, as Walsh wrote, "forcing millions of adult citizens to scan their IDs, faces, or credit cards just to browse the internet." Or all three, most likely.
Australia was the first country to initiate a social-media ban for under-16s, and here's how it works:
- Age inference — Analyzing account data like creation date, behavior, interactions, interests, networks, and activity patterns.
- Age estimation — Facial analysis, voice, language, or video selfies.
- Age verification — Government-issued ID, bank details, or third-party services, but ID cannot be the only option due to privacy concerns.
Privacy concerns? When every social media app is required by law to pry into literally everyone's account to make sure they're of age?
Anonymity is dead, particularly in Airstrip One… I mean, in Britain.
I happen to agree that reducing or maybe even in some cases eliminating screen time for kids is a good idea, particularly when it comes to social media. What the nanny-statists don't want you to know is that you already have the tools to do that — and that there are just two of them, easily employed.
The first is the parental controls on your kids' devices, assuming you let them have devices, that don't allow them to install apps or visit websites without your permission. The second is the power of "No."
"Dad, can I install TikTok?"
"No."
Ten minutes later.
"Dad, can I install TikTok?"
"No."
A week later.
"Dad, can I install TikTok?"
"No."
You get the drill. It gets a little old saying "No" all the time, but that's just parenting. If the EU — or Washington, for that matter — wanted to launch a PR campaign about built-in parental controls, that would be great. But as Walsh put it, "Parents are having their authority stripped by politicians who think they know better."
What the EU's controls will do is take the parents' "No" and turn it into a government-mandated "Maybe," regardless of age. All under von der Leyen's guise of giving "children a safer start online."
George Orwell pictured Big Brother as a Stalinesque, mustachioed villain. But she turns out to be Big Sister in a stylish pantsuit, keeping a close eye on everything the proles do online.
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